1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a system and method for performing blood assays. In particular, the present disclosure is directed to in vivo acoustic biosensors configured to continuously monitor blood to detect presence and/or concentration of an analyte of interest.
2. Background of Related Art
Various types of blood analyzers for detecting specific analytes of interest (e.g., proteins) are known in the art. A conventional blood analyzer utilizes a sensor to detect the presence of the analyte and optionally determines the concentration thereof. In vitro methods are usually utilized to obtain a blood sample from a blood vessel and subsequently provide the sample to the blood analyzer for analysis.
However, known blood analyzers of the type aforementioned present a major drawback which detracts from their overall usefulness and effectiveness. In particular, the conventional blood analyzer is incapable of providing real or present time data of the analyte of interest present in the blood stream. Moreover, the conventional blood analyzer is limited in that it can only indicate the presence of the analyte at the moment when the sample of blood was drawn. In many applications, the amount of analyte present does not exhibit elevated concentrations in the bloodstream until several hours after the biological event.
One conventional solution involves performing multiple in vitro assays to periodically screen the blood for elevated concentration of the analyte. However, performing multiple assays is overly invasive to the patient. In addition, this solution is also imperfect since there is a possibility that occurrence of the biological event may be missed.
This particular problem is acutely prevalent in the field of monitoring of acute myocardial infarction patients. Biochemical markers associated with myocardial infarction (e.g., cardiac troponin) are detectable in the patient's blood stream about 3 to 8 hours from the onset of the condition. In the absence of other indications of the condition (e.g., electrocardiogram indicators, acute distress, etc.) a patient complaining of physical conditions associated with myocardial infarction (e.g., chest pain) is typically observed for up to 12 hours to rule out the infarction as the cause of the symptoms. Conventionally, cardiac marker assays are typically performed serially at 6-8 hour intervals in order to detect a recent infarction. Due to the relatively long time periods between assays, a true infarction patient with biological signs of infarction may, as a result, wait for many hours before the signs are detected. Consequently, there is a delay in providing therapy to the patient.
Therefore it would be desirable to provide a blood analyzer that continuously detects the presence of an analyte in a bloodstream to allow for instantaneous and continuous detection of elevated analyte concentration.